Over the weekend, Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield shared details from a report created by Jeremiah Schofield, a former senior executive at the Social Security Administration who is serving as a whistleblower. He reported that officials from DOGE had developed a plan to force immigrants to self-deport by using Social Security records to declare 2.7 million of them dead. This included U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. Doing so would have cut them off from wages, banks, benefits, and other financial systems. The idea was that if people were erased electronically, they would either leave the country or go to a Social Security office, where they could then be arrested. Ultimately, the plan did not move forward, but at one point, 6,100 mostly Latino immigrants were reportedly moved into the Death Master File. [1]
Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey traveled back to Delaney Hall on Saturday, an ICE detention center in Newark, where he has repeatedly been barred from entering to inspect conditions and speak with detainees. Still, from the windows, women were waving to get his attention. They pointed to a woman lying on one of the beds in a fetal position, visibly unwell or in pain. This facility has one full-time doctor for approximately 850 detainees. [2]
In my state, there are reports that detainees in an ICE detention center have initiated a hunger strike due to poor medical conditions and barriers to accessing attorneys. There are also reports of people being denied life-saving medications that they need.
In the last couple of weeks, three women have died mysteriously at the Huron Valley Women’s Prison, which is near where I live. After years of complaints and advocacy regarding mold and poor conditions, many of the women living there are certainly distressed by these deaths. Additionally, Disability Rights Michigan, a statewide disability advocacy organization, reported in April that women in this prison were regularly missing meals and necessary medications because there were not enough wheelchairs available. Following that important investigative work by Disability Rights Michigan, the prison obtained more wheelchairs. But of course, for reasons that remain unknown, women are dying.
What is going on behind detention and prison walls? So many abuses remain out of view.
I was recently thinking about what Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recounts in his book Night. When a prisoner watched a young boy die, he cried out:
“For God’s sake, where is God?”
Wiesel heard an inner voice respond:
“Where is He? He is there, hanging on the gallows…”
Many people may be asking the same question in these days. And certainly, many would answer that question in a myriad of ways, even as they hold different understandings of what we mean by God.
However we might approach that question, or wherever we may ultimately land, one thing seems clear to me:
If God is anywhere, God is in the detention center.
But for that conviction to offer any comfort — and certainly for it to lead toward liberation — we must also be there, or use our voices, or provide tangible support to those who fear being taken away and placed there.
How will we participate in comfort and liberation?
[1] [2] The first two paragraphs were informed by Heather Cox Richardson’s daily writing, with this information shared in her June 6, 2026 post.”
Smuggling Grace 